The Use of the Decimal System
十进制的使用
According to the oracle inscription shown on tortoiseshells or animal bones，Chinese people in the Shang Dynasty was already able to use 13 words-one，two，three，four, flue，six, seven，eight, nine，ten，hundred，thousand，and ten thousand-to denote any number within 100，000.However,the largest number that can be found is 30，000. The notions of odd，even，and multiple also appeared on the oracle inscriptions.
据甲骨卜辞记载，商代的人们已经学会用一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八、九、十、百、千、万这13个单字记十万以内的任何数字，但是现在能够证实的当时最大的数字是三万。甲骨卜辞中还有奇数、偶数和倍数的概念。
An example of how the ancient Chinese used the decimal system may be seen in an inscription from the thirteenth century BC，in which “547 days” is written “five hundred plus four decades plus seven of days.”The Chinese wrote with characters instead of an alphabet. In the Western alphabet, when writing out numbers greater than nine，new words are used(for example，ten，eleven，and so on ).With Chi-nese characters，ten is ten-blank and eleven is ten-one(zero was left as a blank space:405 is “four blank five”).This was much easier than inventing a new char-acter for each number. Having a decimal system from the beginning was a big ad-vantage in making mathematical advances. The first evidence of decimals in Europe is in a Spanish manuscript of AD 976.
根据公元前13世纪的甲骨文记载，“547天”被写作“500天加40天再加7天”，从此例可以看出中国古人是如何使用十进制的。和别的语言不同，汉语用的是文字而不是字母。西方语言在记载大于9的数字时，使用新词(例如10,11，等)。汉语中，10为十，11为十一(零留作空位:405为“四百零五”)，较西方语言中每个数字以一个单词来对应而言，这种写法容易得多。中国古人从最初就使用十进制进行运算，就数学发展而言，存在很大优势。而在欧洲，有关十进制的最早记载是在公元976年的一份西班牙手稿中。
The decimal system，as a very important invention by the Chinese，boasts great significance in world mathematic history. Joseph Needham(1900一1995)，a famous scientific historian who specialized in Chinese sciences，noted that it was virtually impossible for human beings to have a unified world without the decimal system，and the Chinese numeral system in the Shang Dynasty was basically more advanced and scientific than that of contemporary Babylon and Egypt.
十进制是中国人民的一项杰出创造，在世界数学史上有重要意义。著名的英国科学史学家李约瑟教授曾对中国商代记数法予以很高的评价，“如果没有这种十进制，就几乎不可能出现我们现在这个统一化的世界了”。李约瑟说，“总的说来，商代的数字系统比同一时代的古巴比伦和古埃及更为先进更为科学。”